


I’ll Trade All My Tomorrows (For Just One Yesterday)

by an_actual_ocean



Series: I Attempt to Write Romance [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 20:38:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17148719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/an_actual_ocean/pseuds/an_actual_ocean
Summary: My Naruto SS gift for WithYourRhythm over on tumblr!Kakashi was the one trapped under the rocks instead of Obito, this changes a lot of things.





	I’ll Trade All My Tomorrows (For Just One Yesterday)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WithYourRhythm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WithYourRhythm/gifts).



I don’t even like Obito, yet here I am, dying under a rock for him, Kakashi thinks. Honestly, Kakashi’s made his peace with his inevitable death. Sure, being crushed was pretty painful at first, but he can’t even feel that side of his body now. Maa, that’s probably not a good sign. Kakashi would sigh if he could right now, hopefully Rin and Obito made it out all right.

The only thing Kakashi has a real problem with, is that his good eye was the one that got crushed. Kakashi might already be dying, but he’s a shinobi born and raised and doesn’t like being blind in an unknown location. Or, you know, blind period.

Kakashi doesn’t know how long he laid under those rocks until he heard the crunch of gravel underneath shoes and the muttered, “The Uchiha would have worked better, but I guess this one will do.” Suddenly, the rocks shifted and the pain was back. The entire right side of Kakashi’s body was crying out in protest as rocks ground it into the cave floor beneath him. A strangled shout of pain left Kakashi’s lips before he faded into unconsciousness.

 

Kakashi honestly wasn’t expecting to wake up again, yet here he was, waking up again. He cracked open his eye to see he was still in a cave, but not being crushed. There was also the telltale flicker across the walls of firelight. The strangest thing about Kakashi’s new circumstances, however, was that he was on a bed. A poor quality one, but a bed nonetheless. 

Kakashi groans and attempts to sit up, only to realize there is a very big problem with his body. His right arm and leg are missing, which is to be expected really, what with getting crushed and all. No, the real surprise is the strange white substance covering the stumps. 

“It’s nice to see you awake, boy,” a voice croaked from somewhere in the shadows. A feeling of dread runs down Kakashi’s body. In his experience, people don’t just save shinobi from dying unless they want something, and based on the circumstances, this man wants something.

Kakashi scowls, and there’s another problem, his mask is missing. “Who are you and why did you save me?” Suspicion filling his voice. 

“That’s a funny way of thanking me,” the voice sounds vaguely amused. “I’m Uchiha Madara, by the way, and I saved you because I need you for something.”

Kakashi choked. “Like hell you’re Uchiha Madara! The Shodaime killed him because Madara betrayed the village!”

“Did I betray the village or did the village betray me?” Madara replies. Kakashi has the urge to strangle the shadowy figure.

“Well, Konoha says Madara betrayed the village, and I’m inclined to go with that. Especially because, you know, villages are a big group of people, and it’s unlikely that everyone simultaneously decided that one of the founders needed to go,” Kakashi says drily, putting all his expertise at being a smartass to work.

He sits in smug silence as Madara attempts to formulate an answer. “Hashirama betrayed me,” Not-Madara amends.

Kakashi scoffs, but says nothing.

Madara waits expectantly for Kakashi to say something in response, and when he gets none, he clears his throat. “Right. I’m currently working to create a perfect world, but I need your help! Once you’ve healed, I need you to go collect tailed beasts.”

There’s really no response to that, in Kakashi’s opinion. He levels an unimpressed look into the shadows. “I’d rather just go back to Konoha,” is the only reply Madara receives.

Madara scoffs. “You’d rather go back to the place your teammate is ridiculed for not being a genius, your other teammate is thought weak for her compassion, a place that runs your Sensei so ragged that he barely has time for his students or family, a place that spits on you for the actions of your father, a place that preaches teamwork yet drives your father to suicide for you placing his team above the mission?” He spits. Kakashi trembles in barely suppressed rage.

“What of it,” Kakashi spits back. “I need to get back to Minato and Kushina. They think I’m dead and I can’t do that to them!” Kakashi always knew that anger loosened his tongue. A fact that is coming back to bite him when he needs to be at his best.

“Ah, Kushina,” Madara laughs. “She has so many secrets. Like, for one, she’s the Jinchuuriki of the nine tailed fox.” 

“So what?” Kakashi growls, but inside his mind is reeling. What else are they keeping from him? 

“I just thought you might want to know how little they truly trust you,” Madara says mildly. “She was also part of your father’s Genin team and the last Uzumaki. A woman like that needs to build allies, and what better way than to take care of the poor orphaned Hatake Clan head?”

Kakashi’s hands shake. “She’s not-“ Madara interrupts.

“And Minato, he pities you, but he also doesn’t want you. You see, at the beginning, you fit his needs. A genius so skilled as to make Chunin at six, what else could he want? Of course, then he got Obito and Rin and his needs changed. He needed another team player. So Minato took important missions, and left you to lead two rookies.” Eyes blown wide, Kakashi trembles like a leaf in the wind as he tries to defend the closest thing he has to parents in his mind, but Madara is smart. Those insidious whispers will eventually get the better of Kakashi.

“Still,” Kakashi’s voice shakes, “I can’t abandon them.” 

“The famous Hatake loyalty,” Madara drawls. The wooden frame of the bed shifts underneath Kakashi and begins to move toward Madara. Alarmed, Kakashi attempts to roll off, but branches spring out and catch him.

The bed stops in front of a chair with a decrepit old man sitting in it. A blood red Sharingan meets Kakashi’s steel gray eye. The whispers of betrayal start screaming in Kakashi’s mind. They used you! They growl. Stay here, get revenge. Kakashi’s opinion begins to change, and he abruptly decides that Konoha isn’t worth his time.

“Why should I stay here?” Kakashi snarls, “when you just want to use me too.”

“It’s a trade. I helped you, you help me. I’m not deceiving you about what you mean to me.” 

Kakashi huffs. “Fine, what’s the plan?”

Madara grins wickedly. “The first part of it is that you need a Sharingan. I have a couple spares, so I’ll imbed it in your eye socket when your chakra networks recover from the influx of Hashirama cells.” 

“Hold on, you just have extra Sharingan lying around? Why? And Hashirama cells?” Kakashi face twists in confusion, and he’s suddenly found wishing for his mask back.

Madara sighs. “The Sharingan I have right now were my younger brother’s. The ones I have ‘just laying around’ as you put it, are my own. Hashirama cells are what is responsible for the slow regrowth of your limbs.”

“Ok…” Kakashi says, wishing he hadn’t asked, “you can continue.”

Madara smiles wickedly and continues to speak.

 

Kakashi knew the day would come when Madara expected him to draw the nine tails out of Kushina, the closest thing he ever had to a sister, yet here he was, still dreading the day. “I refuse to be the death of Uzumaki Kushina,” Kakashi says after Madara told him it was time to begin the first stages of his plan.

Madara exhales aggressively. “Figure out a way to remove the nine tails without killing her before her due date and you can spare her, but there is no guarantee and opportunity like this will present itself again. We’re not squandering it.”

Kakashi had two choices, kill one of the few people he had ever cared about or figure out a way to extract a tailed beast from its host without killing them. An impossible task, some might say. But Kakashi was never one to let a silly thing like people’s perception of “possible” stop him. He had eight months to figure out a way to do something no one else had done. Plenty of time, Kakashi smirked. 

Kakashi later decided that after he finishes the seal that will ultimately save Kushina’s life, he’s swearing off fuinjutsu for good. Fuinjutsu is the worst, he adamantly tells himself, the absolute worst.

 

Kakashi should have expected this. He should have expected every clever plan he could ever think of to go up in flames. Yet here he stood, still surprised as Kakashi’s recently transferred Sharingan loses control of the nine-tails. The only consolation is that Kushina is still alive. 

The nine-tails ravages Konoha, and a small part of Kakashi’s mind whispers good, they deserve this, but the larger, more loyal portion screams out in protest. All Kakashi does is stare. Stare, as his home is destroyed by the monster he unleashed. 

“You,” an achingly familiar voice spits out. “Where’s Kushina?”

Turning slowly, Kakashi wishes that he took the full face mask that Madara offered. But, well, arrogance was always Kakashi’s downfall. The black haired boy in front of Kakashi gasps, a painful, broken sound. “K-Kakashi?” Obito whispers. A pit of dread opens up in Kakashi’s stomach.

Kakashi steels himself then smiles the painfully fake eye smile he’s cultivated in a dark cave somewhere in the Land of Earth. “Hey Obito, long time no see!” Obito recoils as if he’d been struck. Kakashi wiggles his fingers in a wave, then shunshins off.

He doesn’t shunshin far enough it seems, because one minute Kakashi is leaning against a tree, trying to regulate his breathing, and the next he’s dodging a fireball the size of a house. 

“You bastard!” Obito is screaming, “how could you?” Kakashi’s breath hitches as Obito leaps at him with a kunai. Dodging with a substitution, Kakashi resolves to avoid using most of his jutsus. They tend to be on the more fatal side, and for all his altercations with Obito, Kakashi really doesn’t want him dead. 

The fight was nostalgic, for all that both Kakashi and Obito have improved. They fall into their old sparring pattern, Obito angrily attacking and Kakashi lazily dodging. Only now, they fought with a ferocity that their childhood spars lacked. 

Kakashi slowly but surely gained the upper hand, to the great frustration and anger of Obito. Slipping under Obito’s guard, Kakashi tackled him to the ground. Obito twisted and Kakashi ended up underneath him. Performing a sealless water trumpet, Kakashi spit a glob of water into Obito’s blazing Sharingan. Obito sputters and Kakashi takes advantage, pinning Obito to the ground. Obito’s Sharingan spins into a Mangekyo, and he slips from Kakashi’s grasp.

Kakashi scowls and curses under his breath as Obito takes full advantage of his intangibility. It’s all Kakashi can do to dodge the insurmountably faster blows. Kakashi takes a hit to the face and he stumbles back. “Fuck,” he spits out blood and starts the hand seals for mokuton.

The forest around the battling duo begins to move. Obito, taking heavy assault from both his surroundings and Kakashi, begins to throw around fire jutsus. However, branches still entangle Obito. Kakashi draws closer, thinking Obito defeated until Obito grins viciously. “Kamui,” he says, and Kakashi falls into a different dimension. 

 

“Creepy purple sky…” Kakashi drawls as he lays on the ground of the Kamui dimension, “creepy purple ground, and oh look, creepy purple swirls!” The swirls engulf Kakashi, and honestly what did he expect?

Kakashi begins to fall again, then he lands on the hardwood floors of the Hokage Tower. “Maa, fuck you too, Obito,” Kakashi growls after he lands. At the startled laugh from another familiar voice, Kakashi’s head jerks up to see Minato behind the Hokage’s desk. 

Scrambling to his feet, Kakashi pulls a kunai out and falls into a defensive position. He eyes the people in the room warily. Obito, Minato, Rin, and Jiraiya look at him with various emotions. Obito and Rin, anguish and rage with a hint of disappointment. Jiraiya is mainly curious, and Minato is as unreadable as ever. Kakashi rapidly starts calculating his odds.

If it were just Obito and Rin, he could escape easily. Sure, Obito defeated him earlier, but Kakashi made the mistake of underestimating Obito. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. Minato adds another level of difficulty. He’s the Hokage, and Kakashi holds no illusions that he’s Kage level yet. Yet. that’s the operative word there. Kakashi still hasn’t revealed his trump card. Madara’s Mangekyou Sharingan. If it were just Minato, Obito, and Rin, Kakashi could use the Mangekyou, risk permanent blindness and chakra exhaustion, and still be in for a difficult fight.

But Jiraiya, throw Jiraiya into the mix and a difficult fight becomes an impossible fight. So Kakashi waits, eyes darting between the four.

Minato steeples his fingers and sighs. “Sit down, Kakashi,” he motions to the chair on the other side of his desk.

Kakashi scoffs. “I’d rather not.” Obito lets out a wordless exclamation of rage before Rin shushes him.

“That wasn’t a request,” Minato’s blue eyes glint, “sit down.”

Kakashi laughs, a hard, guttural sound. “I might be a dog summoner, but I’m not a dog for you to order me around,” Kakashi snarls, Sharingan spinning at his agitation. “You think I’ll fall back into being your perfect little shinobi, tool, whatever, after everything? Think again!” Kakashi’s breaths leave his body faster and faster. Kill them, the voice whispers to Kakashi, make them pay.

“Shut up!” Obito shouts, “you’re our teammate, not a tool! Minato-Sensei cares about you, and-and you’re just throwing it back in his face. How could you?”

“How could I?” Kakashi seethes, “How could you? I was left for dead! My father was driven to suicide! This village doesn’t care about about anything but how many other village’s shinobi it can kill and I’m sick of it! So really, it was easy to turn my back on Konohagakure.”

“The boy is under a genjutsu,” Jiraiya speaks up for the first time. “I wasn’t sure at first, but when your chakra spiked just now, I could feel the foreign chakra enveloping your mind. It’s skillfully done and particularly insidious…”

Kakashi’s eyes widen in realization. Don’t listen! The voice screams. They’re liars! The voices in his head shout in rage, and Kakashi’s head begins to pound. He groans and pinches the bridge of his nose in an effort to alleviate the headache.

Jiraiya makes his way over to Kakashi and presses his hand to Kakashi’s forehead. Pulsing chakra through Kakashi’s body, Jiraiya slowly works to break the genjutsu. All the while Kakashi trembles in pain. Finally, Kakashi’s mind goes blessedly silent and he collapses like a puppet with its strings cut.

 

Kakashi wakes handcuffed to a hospital bed with his chakra sealed. Obito sits in the chair beside him. Exhaling loudly, Kakashi waits for the inevitable uncomfortable conversation. Obito’s head jerks up. “Kakashi, you’re up!” A smile breaks across Obito’s face.

Kakashi grimaces. “I thought you were mad at me.”

Obito gives him a blank look. “Why would I be mad at you? You were under a genjutsu.”

“The genjutsu didn’t put thoughts in my head, Obito. Just fed the resentment to a point where I’d actually act on it.”

Obito snorts. “So? I sorta hate being shinobi too.”

Kakashi lets out a surprised laugh and just lets himself revel in the moment. He looks over at Obito to see black eyes full of mirth. Kakashi smirks. “Who would have thought that you and I would finally get along? Definitely not me.”

Obito chuckles. “Who would have thought Hatake Kakashi would make a joke? Certainly not me.”

Kakashi’s lips tilt upward in a small smile. “It’s good to be back, Obito.”

“It’s good to have you back, Kakashi.”

 

The door to Kakashi’s small flat slams open. “How are you liking house arrest!” Obito says with a grin.

Kakashi looks up from his book. “More than I liked being chained to a hospital bed.”

Obito flops down on the couch next Kakashi and lays his head on his lap. “Come to dinner with me?” Obito grins up at Kakashi.

“House arrest,” was Kakashi’s unimpressed reply.

“You forget,” Obito’s eyes twinkle mischievously, “that I’m a Konoha shinobi and the terms of your house arrest say you can leave with supervision.”

“You, supervision?” Kakashi snorts. 

“I’m not hearing a no…” 

“You’re paying.” Kakashi returns to his reading.


End file.
